your love, beloved
by closingdoors
Summary: Spring, summer, autumn, winter; Castle and Beckett's story through the seasons. COMPLETE.


my love feeds on your love, beloved,  
and as long as you live it will be in your arms  
without leaving mine.  
- If You Forget Me, Pablo Neruda

* * *

**Disclaimer:** Until the moment half of my otp dies a slow and tragic death on the show, it's safe to assume I'm not writing Castle, nor do I own it.

* * *

It's in the spring that he meets her.

In the spring, she is a breath of fresh air. She's stubborn, she hates him, and she wants him gone. And, for some reason unbeknownst to even him, that only makes him want to hang around her more. She isn't fake and she doesn't glamorize him- perhaps that's why he desires her so much. Perhaps it's because she underestimates him and he feels he has something to prove to her. Perhaps it's because she's unique and interesting and an open book yet at the same time a complete enigma. Or maybe it's not any of that at all.

The first rays of sunshine shine through the leaves of trees as they stand over a body in Central Park, birds twitter above the buildings as they head down dirty alleys; spring is here, everything is renewing.

Beckett turns to him in the middle of a case with that bright light of a new idea in her eyes and a smile, and sometimes he gets the insane thought that waking up to that smile for the rest of forever isn't such a bad idea.

He always shakes it away. That's commitment. He doesn't do commitment- He has two failed marriages that speak for themselves.

But then that smile stretches wide in his direction and his breath is stolen right there, in the middle of the precinct, transfixed on her and her dazzling green eyes and her adorable short hair and the contradictory sharp and soft lines of her, tied together with a smile- He tries to move past his reaction, prays to God that she doesn't see, and usually blurts out some form of an innuendo.

It doesn't stop her smile.

* * *

They always spend summer apart.

The first time, she sends him away, smile faltering, eyes filled with tears. The second time, he leaves her because he's sick of rejection and she's happy with Demming, so he lets her be happy- without him. The third time, he spends the entire summer pacing within the four walls of his study, trying to find the words for Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook because he and Kate have fallen to pieces. (He loves her through all of these summers, it's easier to be honest about it when he's away from her and that bewitching smile of hers.)

Until the summer she comes to him, with words that sound like poetry to his ears that no master of literature could ever surpass, _(I just want you)_.

He's supposed to be the one with the words out of the pair of them.

But he is speechless.

* * *

As a writer, the significance of their autumns together is never lost on him.

Usually, they spend the autumn repairing what they broke in the summer. They shed their leaves and leave each other bare, open, ready for the storms of winter until renewal comes in the spring.

He always writes most in the autumn. For her.

But after the summer that they are together, after Bracken and her mom's case and every single ghost that ever held them apart, they do not prepare themselves for a storm. Instead, the autumn is beautiful: they walk hand-in-hand through central park, and she curls up on his couch with him before the fireplace, and they spend their Sunday's lazing around in bed; reading and laughing and making love.

In these moments, he almost falls for her again. Almost. Only, it's not possible to love her more than he already does.

* * *

Winter is cold- until they're together.

Winter is when she lost her mom, but four years later she sheds her traditions and comes to him, standing before his twinkling Christmas tree with something more than a reflection of the lights shining in her eyes.

On their second Christmas, he has a ring in a velvet box wrapped up and tied with a string sitting under the tree, awaiting her opening. Awaiting her smile. Awaiting her answer.

But at midnight and after a round of (frankly spectacular) sex, she curls up against him, naked and sweaty and breathing shallow, a secret in her eyes; in her smile, stretching slow and stretching wide. He forgets the ring. He forgets it completely, because the words that escape her lips in that moment, soft and quiet, like their own secret, banish him from coherent thought.

"Castle... I'm pregnant."

He can see it already: a swollen stomach, pressing his ear against her to hear the kicking, arguing over baby names.

He can see it.

For the first time since he met her, he is sure.

Always is not a false promise.

Always is not a cheesy line.

Always simply

is.


End file.
